The following notes on the possible substratum in proto-indo-iranian based on Lubotsky may also be relevant to substantiate the possible migrations out of the sapta-sindhu region towards, say, Altyn-depe.

Alexander Lubotsky argues for a pre-indo-european substratum.

http://www.ieed.nl/lubotsky/pdf/Indo-Iranian%20substratum.pdf

(Early contacts between Uralic and Indo-European: Linguistic and archaeological considerations. Papers presented at an international symposium held at the Tvarminne Research Station of the University of Helsinki 8-10 January 1999 (Memoires de la Societe Finno-ougrienne 242.) Chr. Carpelan, A. Parpola, P. Koskikallio (eds.), Helsinki 2001, 301-317.) The full paper is a remarkable, insightful document and should be read in the context of BB Lal's observations.

Excerpts:

“Study of loanwords can be a powerful tool for determining prehistoric cultural contacts and migrations, but this instrument is used very differently in various disciplines. For instance, loanword studies are fully accepted in Uralic linguistics, whereas Indo-Europeanists are often reluctant to acknowledge foreign origin for words attested in Indo-European languages. The reason is obvious: in Uralic, we know the source of borrowings (Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Baltic), but the source of possible Indo-European loans is usually unknown. And still, it is a matter of great importance to distinguish between inherited lexicon and borrowings, even if the donor language cannot be determined…In my paper, I shall apply this methodology to the Indo-Iranian lexicon in search of loanwords which have entered Proto-Indo-Iranian before its split into two branches. As a basis for my study I use the list, gleaned from Mayrhofer's EWAia, of all Sanskrit etyma which have Iranian correspondences, but lack clear cognates outside Indo-Iranian…I use the term “substratum” for any donor language, without implying sociological differences in its status, so that “substratum” may refer to an adstratum or even superstratum. It is possible that Proto-Indo-Iranian borrowed words from more than one language and had thusmore than one substratum…Proto-Indo-Iranian for a long time remained a dialectal unity, possibly even up to the moment when the Indo-Aryans crossed the Hindukush mountain range and lost contact with the Iranians…The phonological and morphological features of Indo-Iranian loanwords are strikingly similar to those which are characteristic of Sanskrit loanwords, i.e. words which are only attested in Sanskrit and which must have entered the language after the Indo-Aryans had crossed Hindukush. The structure of Sanskrit loanwords has been discussed by Kuiper 1991…The phonological and morphological similarity of loanwords in Proto-Indo-Iranian and in Sanskrit has important consequences. First of all, it indicates that, to put it carefully, a substratum of Indo-Iranian and a substratum of Indo-Aryan represent the same language, or, at any rate, two dialects of the same language. In order to account for this fact, we are bound to assume that the language of the original population of the towns of Central Asia, where Indo-Iranians must have arrived in the second millennium BCE, on the one hand, and the language spoken in Punjab, the homeland of the Indo-Aryans, on the other, were intimately related…Another consequence is that the Indo-Iranians must still have formed a kind of unity during their stay in Central Asia, albeit perhaps dialectally diversified. Judging by the later spread of the Indo-Aryans – to the south-west in the case of the Mitanni kingdom and to the south-east during their move to Punjab –, they were situated to the south of the Iranians, forming the vanguard, so to speak, of the Indo-Iranian movement. Accordingly, the Indo-Aryans were presumably the first who came in contact with foreign tribes and sometimes “passed on” loanwords to the Iranians…The urban civilization of Central Asia has enriched the Indo-Iranian lexicon with building and irrigation terminology, with terms for clothing and hair-do, and for some artifacts. It is tempting to suggest that the word *gadA- `club, mace' refers to the characteristic mace-heads of stone and bronze abundantly found in the towns of the so-called “Bactria-Margian Archaeological Complex”. Also *uAcI- `axe, pointed knife' may be identified with shaft-hole axes and axe-adzes of this culture.”

It is likely
that some of the readers may not have seen the previous postings on e-groups on
this topic. Hence this introductory paragraph. Chapter Six of my book, How Deep are the Roots of Indian
Civilization? Archaeology Answers (published by Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2009) deals
with this topic. Dr. Francesco Brighenti posted on October 28, 2009 a critique
of it on the Indo-Eurasian_research@yahoogroups.com
. My counter-reply to it was posted on http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/India
Archaeology/message/9409. Now Dr. Brighenti has sent two letters, one
to me and the other to Dr. Kalyanaraman.Whether these have also been posted on some web-site, I do not know.
Hence I will quote from these letters, as necessary, in order to let the
readers know his view-point and my reply thereto.

To recall,
the basic question is: Did or did not a
section of the Vedic people emigrate westwards, out of India? In case
they did, how far west did they go? Since the main document which throws light
on this issue is the Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra
(18.44) it is absolutely necessary to quote the relevant part in the original
so that the readers may have the primary data before them:

Dealing
with this particular passage in his paper, ‘R.gvedic history: poets,
chieftains and polities’, published in 1995 in a book edited by Erdosy,
Professor Witzel, wrote, as follows:

Taking a look at
the data relating to the immigration of Indo-Aryans into South
Asia, one is struck by the number of vague reminiscences of
foreign localities and tribes in the R.gveda, in spite of repeated
assertions to the contrary in the secondary literature. Then, there is the
following direct statement contained in (the admittedly much later) BŚ
[Baudha-yanaS ́rauta-su-tra], 18.44: 397.9 sqq.which has once again been overlooked, not
having been translated yet: “Ayu went eastwards. His (people) are the Kurū-Pan~ca-la and Ka-śi- -Videha. This is the A-yava (migration). (His other
people) stayed at home in the west.His people are the Ga-ndha-ri-, Parśu and A-rat.t.a. This is the Ama-vasava (group)".
(Emphasis mine.)

To return to the Sanskrit text itself.It has two parts. In the first part, i.e. in ‘prāṅayuh
… pravrājam’ the verb used is ‘pravavrāja’, which means ‘migrated’. In the second part, i.e. in ‘pratyaṅamāvasuḥ …. amāvasam’ the
verb is not repeated. However, according to the well known rules of grammar, it
has got to be same as in the first part i.e. it has to be ‘pravavrāja’. As a result, the second part would mean that ‘Amāvasuh
migrated westwards and his descendants are the Gāndhārī, Parśu and
Araṭ̣ṭa.’ (Although it is not necessary, yet I will give an
example of how the ‘missing’ verb has to be inserted. Take, for instance, the
following sentence: “Yesterday, in a match between India and Australia, the
former scored 275 runs, whereas the latter only 230.” In the first part the
verb has clearly been mentioned as “scored”, but in the second part it is not
so mentioned. Nevertheless, it has got to be the same as in the first part,
viz. “scored”.

Though Professor
Witzel has since condescended to accept, though half-heartedly, that my
translation of the text may be correct, he would still prefer to stick to own
translation, viz. that ‘Amāvasu stayed at home in the west’. In its support he
states that the word ‘Amāvasu’ means ‘dwelling-at-home’. And Dr. Brighenti is
also inclined to lean that way. Let these learned scholars be reminded of the
fact that the preceding part of the same Baudhāyana
text clearly says that Purūrava and Urvaśī gave birth to two sons whom
they named Ayu and Amāvasu. These are clearly
‘proper’ names, just as are Michael and Francesco, and cannot be played with,
please.

In this context,
it may not be out of place to recall that Professor Witzel had showered on me
the following ‘compliments’: “It is surprising how an established archaeologist
can be so naïve, in his old age..”
and Dr. Brighenti had added his own quota to it, saying: “Indeed, this new
chapter in Lal’s conversion to
Hindutva-oriented historical revision betrays, at minimum, a very naïve
approach …”. I am sure these learned scholars have seen the translation of
this very passage by Professor Cardona of the University of Pennsylvania, which
tallies with mine. Would they like to pass on the same remarks of being naïve, old and Hindutva-oriented to
their American colleague as well?

Any way, from
what has been stated in the preceding paragraphs, it is abundantly clear that Professor
Witzel had mistranslated the Sanskrit text in order to tell the unwary reader
that while one lot migrated eastwards, the other ‘stayed at home’. In reality it is a case of two-way
migration, viz. eastwards and westwards, from a central point.The
area of partingis likely to
have been somewhere between the Gandhā-ra region on the west and the Kurū region on
the east. Since the Gandhāra region is placed in eastern Afghanistan
and the Kurū region (modern Kurukshetra) is in Haryana in India, the region
from where these eastward and westward migrations took place is most likely to
have been (pre-Partition) Punjab.

All told, therefore, there
can be no denying the fact that a section of the Vedic people did migrate to
the west. The text also very clearly mentions the names of the areas to
which this migration took place. These are, seriatim: Gandhāra, Paraśu and
Araṭṭa.

As regards the
identification of these areas, Dr. Brighenti concludes as follows in his latest
counter-reply to me: “The outcome of my argument is that the Gāndhāris, Paraśus
and Araṭṭ̣as listed in the Baudhāyana
Śrautasūtra 18.44 were settled in an area roughly overlapping with the
present geographic distribution of the Pashto language (see map at http://tinyurl.com/ykf2doy). That later
Vedic passage can in no way be taken as evidence of an ancient westward
migration of Vedic Indians to W. Iran and E. Turkey as you, against all logic,
claim in you latest book.”

In the letter
sent to Dr. Kalyanaraman, Dr. Brighenti repeats the same, adding: “Moreover,
have you asked yourself why the sutra passage under discussion should describe
an eastward migration covering only the relatively short distance from the
Saptasindhu to Kuru-Panchala and Kashi-videha vis-à-vis a westward migration
covering a huge distance (for those times) from Saptasindhu to W. Iran and E. Turkey?”What a logic? Would Dr. Brighenti like to ask
the Harappans, if he were to meet them: “Why did some of you travel only a
short distance eastwards, viz. only up to Haryana, while some others amongst
you dared to travel thousands of kilometers westwards -- all the way up to
Mesopotamia?”

Any way, all
these arguments apart, I give below my own analysis of the available evidence
on these identifications.

Gandhāra.-All available evidence shows that the Gandhāra
region lay in eastern Afghanistan and included an adjacent bit of the strip of
present-day Pakistan, to the west of the Indus.

Parásu.- This terms occurs not only in
the Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra but
also in a completely independent document thousands of kilometers west of India.
Assignable to 835 BCE, it mentions that Assyrian king Shalmaneser received
tributes from 27 kings of Parsuwas.
The region concerned is evidently Parśu
i.e. Persia, which has only recently (1935) been re-named as Iran.

Araṭṭa.- It is here that the shoe pinches
Dr. Brighenti the most. In the letter sent to me, he lashes out: “Only certain
nationalist ‘scholars’ [he has put this word within inverted commas to express
his despise of them], in an overt attempt to construct a more glorious past for
their own country, have proposed that these two toponyms [viz. Araṭṭa and Arārāṭ]
are identical. The name Aratta became an epithet of abundance and glory in
ancient Mesopotamia so much so that an adjective arattu, lit. ‘in the manner of
Aratta’, was introduced with a meaning ‘excellent, noble’. The ‘noble’
Arattians would be, in the opinion of the said Armenian nationalist writers,
the ancestors of Armenians!”

What a debating
technique?

Failing to find
a satisfactory identification, many scholars tend to deny that there ever was
an area named Araṭṭa. Dr. Brighenti, in his letter sent to me says: “Let us.
However, tentatively follow the line of thought of those scholars who continue
to consider Aratta a really existing place. The first thing that stares
youin the face in this case is that
*all* of them place Aratta somewhere in Iran, and many of them currently
consider Seistan to be the best candidate.” Then he himself immediately adds: “But no ‘Ararat’ in sight around here
really!” Please note that the mark of exclamation is his.

In Chapter Six
of my book referred to at the beginning I had made a mention of a 3rd-millennium-BCE epic
which states that a king of Uruk, namedEnmerkar, sent a messenger to Ensuhgiranna, the ruler of Araṭṭa, putting forward certain demands. In reply, the
ruler of Araṭṭa told the messenger “…The queen of heaven and earth, the
goddess of numerous me, holy Inana, has brought to Araṭ̣ṭa, the mountain of
shining me, I whom she has let bar the
entrance of the mountains as if with a great door ..”.This would imply that Araṭṭa was located
close to an opening (pass) in the mountains which the ruler of Araṭṭa could
easily seal. Such a description enhances the claim of the Arārāṭ̣ region as
having been Araṭṭa of the epic.

The Bogazkoy Inscribed Tablets.-These tablets, as is well known, record a treaty between a
Mitanni king named Matiwaza and a Hittite king, Suppiluliuma, ascribable to
circa 1380 BCE.As witnesses to this treaty some gods were
invoked which included the following: Indara (=Vedic Indra), Mitras(il)
(=Vedic Mitra), Nasatia(nna) (= Vedic Na-satya) and Uruvanass(il)
(=Vedic Varun.a).

Further, from
this region and its neighborhood more than a hundred names have come to light
which have a Sanskrit stamp on them: such as: Biridasva (=Vedic Vr.idha-śva); Urudi-ti, a Hurrian king
(= Skt. Urudi-ti); Artasumara,
another Mitanni king (= Vedic R.itasmara, in
addition to Matiwaza = Mativāja, already
mentioned), and so on. The context of some of these names goes back to the seventeenth century BCE. Reference may
also be made to another remarkable document, which deals with the technique of
horse-training. It mentions Sanskrit numerals like ekavartana , trivartana,
etc. meaning thereby that the horse under training should be made to make one
round, three rounds and so on of the race-course.

Commenting
on the Bogazkoy evidence, the renowned Indologist T. Burrow observed (1955): “The
Aryans appear in Mitanni from 1500 BC as the ruling dynasty, which means that they
must have entered the country as conquerors.” ‘Conquerors from where’, may
not one ask? At that point of time there was no other country in the entire
world except India where the above-mentioned gods were worshipped. Giving a thorough analysis of the evidence of
literature and various sciences like archaeology, geology, hydrology, Carbon-14
method of dating, etc. I have shown that theR.igveda decidedly
belonged to a period prior to 2000 BCE. (Cf. my book under discussion for details, pp. 114-17.)Hencethere is no chronological obstacle whatsoever in visualizing a
scenario in which a section of the Vedic people may have entered Turkey some
time in the second millennium BCE.

Dr. Brighenti has had his say and I
too. It is best now to leave it to the readers to arrive at their own
conclusions.

A short review of this astonishing book chapter (I
haven't read the entire book yet) is in order. This is because I subscribe
verbatim to what Michael Witzel wrote about Lal's (post-retirement) scholarship
in a message he posted to this List back in 2006:

"It is surprising how an established
archaeologist can be so naïve,in his old age, about facts from outside his
field (palaeontology, genetics, texts, linguistics) and still loudly proclaim
his 'revolutionary' result (also in his latest book 'The Sarasvati flows on'.)"

Indeed, this new chapter in Lal's conversion to
Hindutva-oriented historical revisionism betrays, at minimum, a very naïve
approach to historical and linguistic facts outside the field of Indian
archaeology, in particular when he has to venture into ANE studies.

Let us start from Lal's latest 'revolutionary' result:
the identification of a Vedic Aryan presence in Hattusa. In this book chapter
he writes [on p. 129]:

"Turkey
has yielded incontrovertible inscriptional evidence about the presence of the
Aryans in that region at least as far back as the 14th century BCE… Hugo
Winckler discovered in his excavations at Bogazkoy certain inscribed clay
tablets on which was recorded a treaty between a Mitanni king named Matiwaza and a
Hittite king, Suppiluliuma, ascribable to circa 1380 BCE. As witnesses to this
treaty the two rulers invoked the following Vedic gods: Indara (=Vedic Indra),
Mitras(il) (=Vedic Mitra), Nasatia(nna) (Vedic Nâsatya) and Uruvanass(il)
(=Vedic Varun.a)... The local population [of the Bogazkoy region] was different
[i.e. non-Aryan] and the Aryans were only the rulers, coming from outside, as
shown by Burrow."

Lal here seems to be suggesting that the above listed
gods were worshipped by some supposed "Aryan rulers" of the Bogazkoy
region; yet he surprisingly omits to mention in his discussion that Bogazkoy,
the archaeological site in whose cuneiform archives the clay tablets recording
the Hittite-Mitanni treaty at issue were found, is no other than Hattusa, the
Hittite capital lying within the Black Sea region of Turkey bordering on
Central Anatolia -- see a location map of Bogazkale (modern name of Bogazkoy) [on
p. 134 of Lal's book] at

Of course, Hittites are not known to have ever
worshipped any gods named Indara, Mitraššil, Našatianna or Uruwanaššel,
anywhere; it is, thus, obvious, as is amply recognized by the scholars, that
those gods are invoked as witnesses in the treaty concluded between Šuppiluliuma
and Šattiwaza [for which latter name Lal uses the obsolete and wrong
transliteration "Matiwaza" -- FB] because they were among the gods
worshipped by the Mitanni king and elites. Hattusa, located at the geographical
core of the Hittite Empire, always lay at a great distance from the boundary of
the Kingdom of Mitanni, in whose capital, Waššukanni (still unidentified
archaeologically, but almost certainly situated in northern Syria or in some
adjoining district of Turkey), the (Indo-)Aryan deities mentioned in the 1380
BCE treaty are likely to have been worshipped by the Mitanni king. Compare the
various maps of the Hittite Empire vis-à-vis the Kingdom of Mitanni
at

This long premise is aimed at showing that Lal's claim
that "Aryans" were present in the Bogazkoy region of Turkey as far
back as the 14th century BCE either rests on his misreading of the archaeological
evidence (i.e. the clay tablets recording the 1380 BCE treaty) and its
politico-historical context, or is an artful lie he devised in order to move
the furthest west he could the limit reached by his fancied westward migration
of Vedic people out of India. Yet, unfortunately for him, no Vedic people ever
lived in Hattusa or the region surrounding it.

What one is left with once Lal's novel
Vedic-Aryans-in-West-Asia theory is returned to its author with reproaches, is
the well-known fact that some gods whose names are nearly identical in shape to
those of the Vedic gods Indra, Varun.a, Mitra, and the As'vins (Nâsatya), were
worshipped by the rulers and elites of the Kingdom of Mitanni. No big news
here. Yet, in this chapter of his new book Lal completely omits to discuss or
even merely cite the various linguistic assessments of the Bogazkoy inscription
made by scholars in the course of a century (to cite only some: Thieme's,
Dumont's, Mayrhofer's, and Witzel's) to the effect that those were gods
worshipped by a group of pre-Vedic Indo-Aryan speakers who migrated to
Kurdistan from southern Central Asia *before* the majority section or the same
people moved to the Greater Panjab region. Instead, he very reticently limits
himself to asserting that "certain scholars" in the past would have
held that the Mitanni rulers
and elites who worshipped the aforesaid gods were Indo-Aryan speakers "on
their way to India":

"[The] Bogazkoy evidence was given a different
twist by certain scholars in the past. While admitting that the gods mentioned
in the treaty were Indo-Aryan, they argued that these people were on their way
to India.
They took this stand because in those days, as per Max Müller's fatwa [sic],
the Vedas were considered to have been only as old as 1200 BCE whereas the
Bogazkoy inscription was dated to the 14th century BCE. Now that we know full
well that the Vedas are in no case posterior to 2000 BCE, that kind of argument
is no longer valid [p. 130 in
Lal's book]."

In sum, since Lal has established "full well",
on other grounds (probably -- although I couldn't read his new book in its
entirety -- on the basis of the "Vedic Sarasvatî" argument, which he
habitually pushes to the utmost), that "the Vedas are in no case posterior
to 2000 BCE," the so-called Mitanni Indo-Aryans can be but a group of
Vedic Aryans having migrated to Kurdistan from their supposed ancestral
homeland in N.W. South Asia.

Three more "pearls" from Lal's book chapter,
all confectioned on the basis of one well-known passage from the Baudhâyana
S'rautasûtra, a late Vedic text which is perhaps not later than the sixth
century BCE), are the following:

1) The Arât.t.as, listed in Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra
18.44 as a western people of Vedic Aryan stock, are identified by Lal as the
inhabitants of the mysterious land of Aratta referred to in Mesopotamian
literary works, which is, in turn, identified by him with the region of Mount
Ararat in ancient Armenia! According to Lal, this would have been the starting
point for the subsequent immigration, discussed above, of Vedic Aryans into the
Hattusa region of Turkey.
Now, in our days a case for Aratta = the Biblical Ararat (Urartu in Akkadian
sources) is only being made by certain Armenian nationalist scholars (followed
in this by the controversial author David Rohl). The identification is, in
fact, based on a superficial sound-likeness only. Nowadays scholars who don't
think that Aratta was a mythical place -- and there are still many who think it
actually was -- place Aratta somewhere in Iran; a consensus is slowly emerging
on the tentative location of the land of Aratta in Seistan (viz., in the area
of Shahr-i Soktha). Lal has, therefore, espoused an odd belief in order to find
some support for his Vedic-Aryans-in-West-Asia theory.

2) Lal identifies the Pars'u [tribe] mentioned in Baudhâyana
S'rautasûtra 18.44 with the Persians (who, as he himself notes, entered the
historical record as a people settled in *western* [Iran]), although in the same
passage they are said to be the neighbors of the Gândhâris. He says that these
Pars'us migrated to Persia from Eastern Iran in the mid-second millennium BCE,
and that before that migration they were a section of the Vedic Aryans who,
after leaving India, had "sojourned for some time in Afghanistan",
where they, presumably together with other Iranian-speaking tribes, had
developed the typical features of Iranian languages and had participated in the
religious changes that led to the rise of the Avestan religion.

3) Always on the basis of Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra 18.44,
Lal identifies the Gândhâris -- according to him, another supposed early
offshoot, and the most easterly located, of the Vedic Aryans migrating
westwards -- with the people of the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. This is
another untenable notion. As a matter of fact, there is no historical or
geographical reason for considering Kandahar in
Arachosia to have been ever included in the classical Gandhâra kingdom on the
upper Indus and Kabul
Rivers. Therefore, if the
name of Kandahar
is to be derived from Gandhâra, that is not because it was a city in Gandhâra.
Early Muslim historians use Kandahar as the name
of Gandhâra and in particular of Wayhind, the capital city of the Hindu S'âhi
kings of Kabul
and Gandhâra. It seems probable that the name was transferred to Kandahar in Arachosia by
some migration of Buddhist Gandharans. Indeed, al-Masudi writes that "it
was from this Kandahar
[in Gandhâra] that the name was carried to the settlement of the Gandharans on
the banks of the Arghastan [in Arachosia]". The Indian Kandahar, according
to al-Baladhuri, was taken by Hisham ibn 'Amr al-Taghlibi, the governor of Sind under the Abbasid al-Mansur. It was perhaps on that
occasion that part of the Buddhist populace of the Indian Kandahar fled to
Arachosia; the by then already age-old city of Kandahar may have got its 'final' name after
these fugitives. It seems that an earlier immigration of Gandhâra people
westwards (into Arachosia?) occurred when the Hephthalites captured the capital
of the kingdom in the late fifth century (source: Sung-Yun's travel account).
It is a fact that the earliest clear reference to the name of Kandahar in Arachosia is recorded from the
late ninth century, and the name is again found in Islamic sources only from the
thirteenth century onwards. Other etymologies for the name of Kandahar have been proposed, but this seems
to me the most plausible; theories deriving it from Iskander, the Asian name
for Alexander, are now generally discarded. The logical consequence of all this
is that the Gândhâris of Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra 18.44 cannot be, as Lal would
make it, the people of the region of Kandahar
-- a name that was given to this town only in the wake of Islamic invasions!

ON THE EMIGRATION OF A SECTION OF THE VEDIC PEOPLE
FROM NORTH-WEST INDIA TO WESTERN ASIA

My attention has been drawn to a review of Chapter 6
of my book, How Deep are the Roots of Indian Civilization? Archaeology Answers,
by Dr. Francesco, posted on the Web-site
“Indo-Eurasian_research@yahoogroups.com”, dated October 28, 2009. Dr. Francesco
opens the review by quoting from his mentor, Professor Michael Witzel, wherein
the latter says: "It is surprising how an established archaeologist
[referring to me] can be so naïve, in his old age, about facts from outside his
field (palaeontology, genetics, texts, linguistics) and still loudly proclaim
his 'revolutionary' result (also in his latest book 'The Sarasvati Flows
On'." To this Dr. Francesco adds his own flavor: "Indeed, this new
chapter in Lal’s conversion to Hindutva-oriented historical revisionism betrays,
at minimum, a very naïve approach to historical an linguistic facts …".

Professor Witzel is well known for making such
unsavory personal remarks. For example, at a seminar organized by UMASS,
Dartmouth, in June 2006, when I drew the attention of the audience to the
learned professor’s wrong translation of the a very crucial passage from the Baudhâyana
S'rautasûtra, which is the main subject of the discussion by Dr. Francesco,
Professor Witzel shot at me by saying that I did not know the difference between
Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. He had to be told that I had the privilege of
obtaining in 1943 my Master’ Degree in Sanskrit, which course included a study
of the Vedas, and that I had obtained a First Class First from a first class
university of India, namely that of Allahabad. I have already referred to this
incident in my Inaugural Address delivered at 19th International Conference on
South Asian Archaeology, held at the University
of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy,
July 2-6, 2007, which is duly published.

I do not propose stooping down to the low level of
these learned scholars. At the same time it must be said that this particular
type of debating technique is adopted by these scholars with a view to
intimidating the opponent on the one hand and, on the other, impressing upon
the reader that the if the author concerned is 'naïve' and 'old' how can his
conclusions be correct? However, it is a great satisfaction that by now the
reader all over the world has become fully aware of their game-plan.

I now proceed to answer the various points raised by
Dr. Francesco.

Since the passage from the Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra (18.44)
forms the central piece in the debate, it is necessary to discuss it in some
detail. The relevant Sanskrit text reads as follows:

[N.B. This is the transliteration of this passage as provided
in W. Caland, _The Baudhâyana S'rauta Sûtra belonging to the Taittitîya
Samhitâ_, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1904-13: 397.8-12; it has been substituted
by me for Dr. Lal's one because diacritics did not show properly in his email
-- FB]

Dealing with this particular passage in his paper,
"R.gvedic History: Poets, Chieftains and Polities", published in 1995 in a book edited by
Erdosy, Professor Witzel, wrote, as follows:

"Taking a look at the data relating to the
immigration of Indo-Aryans into South Asia,
one is struck by the number of vague reminiscences of foreign localities and
tribes in the R.gveda, in spite of repeated assertions to the contrary in the
secondary literature. Then, there is the following direct statement contained
in (the admittedly much later) BŚS [Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra], 18.44: 397.9 sqq.
which has once again been overlooked, not having been translated yet: 'Ayu went
eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pan~câla and the Kâśî-Videha. This is the Âyava
(migration). (His other people) stayed at home in the west. His people are the
Gândhârî, Pars'u and Arat.t.a. This is the Amâvasava (group)'." (Emphasis
mine.)

To return to the Sanskrit text itself. It has two
parts. In the first part, i.e. in 'prânayuh… pravrâjam' the verb used is 'pravavrâja',
which means 'migrated'. In the second part, i.e. in 'pratyanamâvasuh… amâvasam'
the verb is not repeated. However, according to the well known rules of
grammar, it has got to be same as in the first part i.e. it has to be 'pravavrâja'.
As a result, the second part would mean that 'Amâvasuh migrated westwards and
his descendants are the Gândhârî, Pars'u and Arat.t.a'. (Although it is not
necessary, yet I will give an example of how the 'missing' verb has to be
inserted. Take, for instance, the following sentence: "Yesterday, in a
match between India and Australia, the
former scored 275 runs, whereas the latter only 230." In the first part
the verb has clearly been mentioned as "scored", but in the second
part it is not so mentioned. Nevertheless, it has got to be the same as in the
first part, viz. "scored".)

All this clearly shows that the learned professor had
deliberately mistranslated the Sanskrit text in order to tell the unwary reader
that while one lot migrated eastwards, the other 'stayed at home'. In reality
it is a case of two-way migration, viz. eastwards and westwards, from one
central point. The area of parting is likely to have been somewhere between the
Gândhâra region on the west and the Kuru region on the east. Since the Gândhâra
region is placed in eastern Afghanistan
and the Kuru region (modern Kurukshetra) is in Haryana in India, the region from where these eastward and
westward migrations took place is most likely to have been the (pre-Partition) Punjab.

There can, therefore, be no denying the fact that a
section of the Vedic people did migrate to the west. The text also very clearly
mentions the names of the destinations of this migration. These are, seratum:
Gandhâra, Pars'u and Arat.t.a.

Although Dr. Francesco has raised certain objections
in respect of the identification of these areas, these objections are
meaningless. The term Gandhâra occurs in ancient literature and was doubtless a
part of Afghanistan
-- whether northern or southern it is of little consequence in the present
context. Pars'u, which is also referred to by the same name in an 835-BCE
inscription of Shalmaneser of Assyria, is again very clearly Persia.(The name
was changed to 'Iran' only in 1935.) As regards Aratta, most scholars hold it
to be Ararata in the Armenian region, but Dr. Francesco, allergic to that
identification, would like to take it all the way to Seistan. Says he:
"Nowadays scholars… place Aratta somewhere in Iran;
a consensus is slowly emerging on the tentative location of the land of Aratta in Seistan." What is this
'somewhere'? Evidently, because Dr. Francesco does not know 'where'. Again,
what indeed is the value of a phrase like "a consensus is slowly emerging
on the tentative location…". Surely, this is yet another technique to
avoid facing the reality. Truth is sometimes too bitter to swallow!

Now to the evidence of the inscribed clay tablets
discovered at Bogazkoy in Turkey.
Ascribable to circa 1380 BCE, these tablets recorded a treaty between a Mtanni
king named Matiwaza and a Hittite king, Suppiluliuma in which the following
gods were invoked as witnesses: Indara (=Vedic Indra), Mitras(il) (=Vedic
Mitra), Nasatia(nna) (= Vedic Nâsatya) and Uruvanass(il) (=Vedic Varun.a).
Scholars agree that this treaty establishes the presence of the Vedic people in
a part of Turkey.
In fact, Dr. Francesco himself admits this reality when he says: "The
(Indo-)Aryan deities mentioned in the 1380 treaty are likely to have been
worshipped by the Mitanni
king." The only debating point left now is whether these Indo-Aryans were
on their way to India or had
come there from India.
The reason for some scholars to have held the former view was that at the time
of the discovery of these tablets, viz. at the beginning of the 20th century,
the date of the Vedas, as per the fatwa of Max Müller in the 19th century, was
taken to be 1200 BCE. (In this context it must not be forgotten that Max Müller
had himself back-tracked by saying: "Whether the Vedic hymns were composed
[in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever
determine.") In Chapter IV, Section H, of my book under discussion I have
given detailed evidence from archaeology, geology, hydrology, C-14 dating and
literature, which clearly establishes that the Ṛ̣igveda is older than 2000 BCE.
How much earlier is anybody's guess. However, other scholars like Kazanas and
Nahar Achar place the Rigveda in the fourth millennium BCE. The former uses the
linguistic evidence, whereas the latter bases his dating on the astronomical
data. This new evidence thus shows that the mention of the names of the Vedic
gods on the Bogazkoy tablets in Turkey
is the finale of the movement of the Vedic people from north-west India to that
region. In this context one might as well pose a question: "Was there any
country, other than India,
in the entire world in the 14th century BCE, i.e. at the time of the Bogazkoy
treaty, where the gods Indra, Varun.a, etc. were worshipped?" The answer
is an emphatic "NO". Then why shy away from facing the reality? In
fact, at one stage in his own review, Dr. Francesco admits: "the so-called
Mitanni Indo-Aryans can be but a group of Vedic Aryans having migrated to Kurdistan from their supposed ancestral homeland in N.W.
South Asia." [N.B. The last citation refers to a thesis I had actually
attributed to Dr. Lal, not to myself, in my post to the Indo-Eurasian_research
List -- FB.]

Research is an ongoing process, not something static. With
new evidence pouring in every day, paradigms have to be changed and one should
not feel belittled if one's earlier views have to be modified in the light of
the new data. Let not an ostrich-like attitude blind us to the upcoming truth!

First, a few further comments on your
"Vedic-Aryans-in-Hattusa" thesis. The following are the two Cuneiform
Akkadian versions of the treaty between the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma and the Mitanni king
Šattiwaza:

It is clear to anybody that the gods Mitraššil,
Uruwanaššel, Indar, and Našatianna, whose names are appended to a long list of
deities guaranteeing the treaty, are included in the section dedicated to the
gods of the land
of Mitanni. These four
deities were not counted among the gods of the land of Hatti
-- that is, they were not worshipped in Hattusa/Bogazkoy! Yet, on the map at p.
134 of your new book, showing your alleged migration of Vedic Aryans westwards,
the arrow indicating the direction of the migration ends at Bogazkoy in central
Anatolia. Moreover, at pp. 130-131 you state
that "the Aryans", coming from outside, were the rulers of the
Bogazkoy (= Hattusa) region. It is therefore apparent that, based solely on the
attestation of the aforesaid Mitanni Indo-Aryan theonyms in clay tablets found
at Bogazkoy, you, Dr. Lal, have turned your ubiquitous Vedic Aryans into the
rulers of the core area of the Hittite empire, which is simply false! This is
the most amazing mistake (or, worse, suggestion of the false) you have made in
that chapter of your book.

As your intent is basically to attribute a Vedic Aryan
(i.e. Indian) ancestry to the worshippers of the Mitanni gods Mitraššil,
Uruwanaššel, Indar, and Našatianna mentioned in the Bogazkoy tablets, please
see to modify your map in the next edition of your book so as to have the route
of your claimed out-of-India migration terminated in the area of N. Syria/ S.E.
Turkey, where the kingdom of Mitanni (which those deities belonged to) lay.
(Not that I believe there ever were any Vedic Aryans/Indians in that region,
for the so-called Mitanni Indo-Aryans were neither "Vedic" nor
"Indians", but this precaution at least would not expose you to
public ridicule for having confused the kingdom of the Hittites for that of
Mitanni.)

Let me now provide a fuller assessment of the ethnics
Gândhâri, Pars'u, and Arât.t.a mentioned together in Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra
18.44. My discussion will not enter into the polemics surrounding M. Witzel's
translation and interpretation of that passage, to which you, Dr. Lal, devote
most of your response to my post; it will, on the contrary, focus on the
problem of the location of the three aforesaid tribes in the late Vedic period,
which your latest book proposes to solve in an unacceptable way.

1) GÂNDHÂRI

In your book you write: "Gândhâra is straightaway
identifiable. It is the Kandahar province of Afghanistan" (pp. 133-134). After
reading my disproval of that identification, you now write: "Gandhâra… in
ancient literature… was doubtless a part of Afghanistan -- whether northern or
southern it is of little consequence in the present context."

The fact is, that the Vedic Gandhâris (or Gandhâras)
are clearly located in East Afghanistan *and* North
Pakistan. They were not exclusively settled in Afghanistan as
you seem to believe. According to Zimmer they were settled in Vedic times on
the south bank of the River Kubhâ (mod. Kabul)
up to its junction with the Indus and for some distance down the east side of
the Indus itself (the Kabul river, of course,
flows partly in Afghanistan
and partly in Pakistan).
From the earliest period the settlement area of the Gandhâris was, thus, the
region from Kabul
to Rawalpindi/Islamabad, representing the core area of the later Gandhâra
country as known from historical sources. D.C. Sircar writes that the
S'atapatha and Aitareya Brâhman.as, which certainly predate the reference to
the Gândhâris (scil. Gandhâris) found in the Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra, mention
one Nagnajit the Gândhâra, i.e. king of the Gandhâras, who is in turn mentioned
in the Pali literature (which is later than the Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra) as the
king of Kas'mîra-Gandhâra with his capital at Taks.as'ilâ. These literary
references certainly don't support your statement that in the late Vedic period
the Gandhâri tribe was exclusively settled in modern Afghanistan,
and not also in parts of modern Pakistan.
Your claim about a migration of the Gandhâri tribe out of India is,
therefore, unsupported at best.

2) PARS'U

In the case of the Sanskrit ethnic Pars'u, it must
first be noticed that it probably derives, like the Old Persian name Pârsa (=
Persian), from a proto-form *parc'u-. The term *parc'u- was perhaps used by the
early Iranians to describe different politically and economically organized
units (or 'polities') tracing their origin to an area or ethnos bearing that
Iranian name (whose etymology is still debated) rather than to describe a
series of biologically related ethno-linguistic entities (or 'tribes'). This
interpretation of *parc'u- would account for the mention, in Assyrian sources,
of *two distinct* countries (not peoples) in the eastern borderlands of
Mesopotamia -- the one situated in the central Zagros Mountains, the other in
Persis (the historical settlement area of the Pârsa tribe, or Persians) --
designated by the name of Parsua (var. Parsuaš, Parsumaš, Parsamaš), a
non-Semitic toponym representing Iranian *pârsva-/*pârsua- (< *pârc'ua-, a
vr.ddhi from *parc'u-). The etymon *parc'u- would also account for the name of
the Parsii of the classical authors, a people situated somewhere between Lake
Urmia and the Caspian Sea by Strabo, or in the mountains of Afghanistan by
Ptolemy (who also mentions another tribal community bearing a similar name,
Parsyetae, in the same region); for the Old Persian name of the Parthians of
northeastern Iran, Parthava (< *parc'aua-); and finally, for the probable
continuation of the original Iranian word in the language-name Paš.tô (derived
from *parc'aua- via a regular development of -*rc'- > -*rs- > -š.t- by,
among others, G. Morgenstierne and P.O. Skjærvø), originally designating an
Iranian people settled in the present Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and the
land they inhabited. Indo-European ethnic/country names often spread over wide
areas and were used by widely scattered different peoples, and the Iranian word
*parc'u- seems to be a case in point in this regard.

Further, there is the Sanskrit name Pars'u. According
to Pân.ini (5.3.117), Pars'u is the name of a warlike tribal association (âyudhajîvi
sangha), probably in the north-west as is apparent from the names of the other
warrior tribes mentioned in the same aphorism, all of whom inhabited the
general region of the north-west. E.A. Grantovsky relates Pân.ini's Pars'us
with the modern language-name Paš.tô. This would imply that, though they were
Iranians (possibly in part Indianized), these Pars'us were not the Persians of
Persis, contrary to a hypothesis that has been advanced by many a scholar in
the past and that you, Dr. Lal, accept uncritically in your book. On the
contrary, the fact that the Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra, which is earlier than Pân.ini,
mentions the Pars'us along with the Gândhâris (= Gandhâris) provides further
evidence for a general location of the Pars'us on the north-western border of
the Indian sub-continent.

In the R.gveda, Pars'u is attested twice as a personal
name (8.6.46: Pars'u Mânavî; in 10.86.23 the Iranian-looking name Tirindira is
associated with the name Pars'u, yet it is not certain that the two are one and
the same person). Among the early Vedic scholars, Ludwig and Weber thought that
the personal name Pars'u in the R.gveda would relate to the Persian ethnicity
of its holders; yet, Zimmer, Hillebrandt, Macdonnell and Keith opposed this
view (for discussion, see Macdonnell & Keith's Vedic Index, Vol. I, pp.
504-505). The only certain references to an ethnic group called the Pars'us in
ancient Indian literature are, therefore, those found in the later Vedic Baudhâyana
S'rautasûtra and the As.t.âdhyâyî of Pân.ini, which probably refer to an
Iranian-speaking tribal community ancestral to the modern Pashtuns (see above).

3) ARÂT.T.A

In your response to my post you, Dr. Lal, continue to
defend your untenable Aratta = Ararat equation with writing: "As regards
Aratta, most scholars hold it to be Ararata in the Armenian region." Such
a statement is utterly false. Consequently, let me discuss this question in the
most clear terms possible.

What the Bible (Genesis 8.4) terms as "the
mountains of Ararat" is the mountainous plateau north of Assyria: Assyrian
Urartu (spelt as KUR u-ra-ar-t.u in Akkadian cuneiform), Babylonian Uraštu (a
later form spelt as KUR u-ra-aš-t.u in Akkadian cuneiform), Old Hebrew and
Imperial Aramaic <'rrt.> (/'/ = Semitic alef, a silent glottal stop; /t./
= Semitic emphatic -t-). In one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a fuller (plene)
writing of the Hebrew consonant sequence <r-r-t.> is spelt
<w-r-r-t.>, and thus confirms the pronunciation *Urarat, which is nearly
identical to Assyrian Urartu (the two words include the same consonants in the same
order). In the 4th century C.E. the original Hebrew pronunciation was
forgotten, and a simple -a- was inserted into the consonantal sequence,
resulting in its mispronunciation as Ararat and in common use today. Therefore,
the Hebrew spelling "Ararat" for the old Urartian region did not
appear until the first millennium C.E.

This being the case, no specialist in Sumerian or
Semitic languages has ever dreamed of identifying the toponym <'rrt.>
'Ararat' (of foreign origin in Old Hebrew) with the much older Sumerian toponym
Aratta (segmented as a-rat-ta in Mesopotamian syllabaries). The name Aratta
includes the consonants <r + double t>, which is quite different from the
consonant sequence <r-r-t.>. Only certain Armenian nationalist "scholars",
in an overt attempt to construct a more glorious past for their own country,
have proposed that these two toponyms are identical. The name Aratta became an
epithet of abundance and glory in ancient Mesopotamia,
so much so that an adjective arattû, lit. 'in the manner of Aratta', was
introduced with a meaning 'excellent, noble'. The 'noble' Arattians would be,
in the opinion of said Armenian nationalist writers, the ancestors of the
Armenians!

Sumerian stories locate the city and the land of Aratta
beyond seven mountain ranges east of Susa and Anšan,
which points to the general area of eastern Iran. In some early third-millennium
B.C.E. Sumerian texts Aratta is reported to be rich in mineral resources (gold,
silver, copper, tin, carnelian and, notably, "lumps of lapis
lazuli"). However, several eminent scholars currently deny that this
Aratta was a really existing place. P. Michalowski, for instance, has assembled
arguments in favor of Aratta of Sumerian sources being a mythical 'El Dorado' of remote
antiquity, a narrative invention. So far there are no certain references to
Aratta in non-literary Mesopotamian texts; Aratta is, indeed, only described in
narrative (not economic or historical) texts. Following Michalowski's, some
equally negative assessments of the question of Aratta's historicity have been
recently made by D.T. Potts and P. Steinkeller.

Let us, however, tentatively follow the line of
thought of those scholars who continue to consider Aratta a really existing
place. The first thing that stares you in the face in this case is that *all*
of them place Aratta somewhere in Iran, and many among them currently
consider Seistan to be the best candidate. But no "Ararat" in sight
around here, really!

The Aratta= Seistan equation has been established by J.F.
Hansman and has got the support of, among others, archaeologists and scholars
like M. Tosi, G.L. Possehl, F. Vallat, and J. Harmatta.

Iranian/Afghan Seistan, whose main centre in the early
Bronze Age was the town of Sahr-i
Sokhta, has been identified with Aratta mainly on account of two reasons. The
first one is the city's relative proximity to the major lapis source of
antiquity, located in Badakhshan (N.E. Afghanistan). Thanks to its location at
the confluence of two routes from the lapis mines in Badakhshan, the one down
the Arghandab and the Helmand valleys, the other across southern Turkmenia,
Shahr-i Sokhta is thought to have acted as a major centre for the working of
lapis and its subsequent trade overland to Elam
and Mesopotamia. The rough blocks of lapis
unearthed at this site match very well the references to "lumps of lapis
lazuli" being worked in the city of Aratta included in the Sumerian
narrative poem 'Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta'. According to this view, in
the third millennium B.C.E. Aratta/Shahr-i Sokhta was a nodal point that
exerted a monopoly over the production of lapis lazuli and controlled the
principal overland routes from the lapis mines in Badakhshan to Elam and Mesopotamia.
The second important reason for the identification of Aratta with Seistan is
provided by the legendary account of the 'Great Revolt against Naram-Sin', a
late third-millennium B.C.E. text that, among the various polities allied
against the Akkadian king, mentions Meluhha, Aratta, Marhaši and Elam, in this
exact sequence. This has been taken as evidence of a geographical alignment of
those four countries along an east-west axis (with Meluhha = Baluchistan,
Aratta = Seistan, Marhaši = the Jiroft region, Elam
= the Susa
region). Such a location would also fit the literary descriptions of Aratta as
a distant land lying beyond several mountain ranges east of Susa and Anšan. Finally, it is remarkable
that Ptolemy (6.10.3) mentions a city named Aratha in South
Turkmenia, whose name may be related to that of ancient Aratta in
Seistan.

The Sanskrit word Ârat.t.a (var. Arât.t.a) may be a
reflex of Sumerian Aratta. This word, absent in early and middle Vedic
literature, is first attested (twice) in the late Vedic Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra
-- the first time (18.13, together with the Gândhâras in the north-west) as the
name of an unorthodox tribe which a Brahmin should not visit, and the second
one (18.44, once again along with the Gândhâris and, this time, also with the
Pars'us), as one of the three members of the mysterious "Amâvasu"
group of tribes. In later Sanskritic literature the name denotes parts of the
Panjab: for instance, in the Mahâbhârata (8.44-45) Ârat.t.a is said to be the
non-orthopraxic country in the north-west where the five rivers of the Panjab
meet.

In sum, the Ârat.t.as of Sanskritic literature
inhabited the general area of the Greater Panjab (which also included parts of
eastern Afghanistan),
next to the Pars'us and Gandhâris. If (and I say "if") the similarity
between the two names, Sumerian Aratta and Sanskrit Ârat.t.a, is due to ancient
borrowing of an 'Arattian-language' toponym into both Sumerian and Sanskrit,
and if (and I repeat "if") the Aratta country really existed, and it
was identical with Seistan (with its major centre at Shahr-i Sokhta), then the
following scenario could be devised:

1) in the late Bronze Age Indo-Iranian immigrants from
Central Asia (it cannot be stated whether they were Indo-Aryans or Iranians)
settle in Seistan at a time when the latter region is still called Aratta in
its (unknown) local language, and borrow that name as their tribal
self-designation ('the Arattians');

2)by the later
Vedic period they have moved to the mountain areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border via the Helmand and the Arghandab valleys (i.e. Arachosia), so that the Baudhâyana
S'rautasûtra refers to them (twice) as the neighbors of the Gandhâris of the Kabul river valley;

3) these 'Arattians', now Indianized, further move
into the Panjab plains, so that the Mahâbhârata (composed in the early
historical period) describes the Ârat.t.as as the despised inhabitants of the
country where the five rivers of the Panjab meet.

CONCLUSION

The outcome of my argument is that the Gândhâris,
Pars'us, and Arât.t.as listed in Baudhâyana S'rautasûtra 18.44 were settled in
an area roughly overlapping with the present geographic distribution of the
Pashto language (see map at http://tinyurl.com/ykf2doy).
That later Vedic passage can in no way be taken as evidence of an ancient westward
migration of Vedic Indians to W. Iran and E. Turkey
as you, against all logic, claim in your latest book.

Regarding Prof. Witzel's allegedly wrong translation
[mentioned by Dr. Lal in his private mail to me -- FB], kindly take notice I am
familiar with the whole story (viz., Prof. Cardona's criticism of it, Prof. Witzel's
subsequent clarification, and Vishal Agarwal's anti-Witzel pamphlet centering
on this matter), yet I thought it was unnecessary to enter into this question
in order to debunk Dr. Lal's placement of the Gândhâris in Arachosia, of the Arât.t.as
in Armenia, and of the Pars'us in Fârs. Debunking this novel thesis, never put
forward by any other scholar before, was the exclusive goal of my two long
notes.

However, if you want to know my opinion (since [in an
earlier private mail to me -- FB] you write that my comment "seems to
skirt the locus"), it is as follows:

1) Witzel has clarified long ago (see his notes n. 45
and 46 at p. 18 of his online paper at

that, though he continues to prefer his own
translation ("Amâvasu [whose name means 'Dwelling-at-Home'] in the
west", that is, a Brâhman.a-like pun "Amâvasu [stayed at home] in the
west") to the translation "Amâvasu went westwards," he
acknowledges that both translations are possible, for the passage is
syntactically ambiguous.

2) Since I am persuaded that my identification of the
general area of settlement of the three "Âmâvasyavah" tribes during
the later Vedic period is correct (namely, that they were settled in the border
area between Afghanistan and
Pakistan),
the possibilities are now two:

a) if the correct translation of this sutra passage is
"Amâvasu (stayed at home) in the west," then the Gândhâris, Pars'us
and Arât.t.as are there described as the old inhabitants of the border area
between Aghanistan and Pakistan;

b) if the correct translation is " Amâvasu went
westwards," then the three tribes are there said to have moved, at a
certain time, from an area west of the Kuru land to the border area between
Afghanistan and Pakistan -- yet, this seems at least strange, given that the
name of their supposed progenitor, Amâvasu, means 'Dwelling-at-Home', i.e., one
who doesn't move or migrate!

3) Finally, even in case the correct translation be
" Amâvasu went westwards", Lal's speculations about a westward
migration of Vedic Aryans to W. Iran and E. Turkey
are totally unsubstantiated, as I have strived to demonstrate in my two notes.
Moreover, gave you asked yourself why the sûtra passage under discussion should
describe an eastward migration covering only the relatively short distance from
the Saptasindhu to the Kuru-Pan~câla and the Kâśi-Videha vis-à-vis a westward
migration covering the huge distance (for those times) from the Saptasindhu to
W. Iran and E. Turkey?

I am forwarding your response to Prof. BB Lal whose email address
is on the cc. If you have any further comments, please send them directly.

In my view, this exchange should be posted on the web, even if you
have decided not to post on some egroups.

The point made by Prof. Lal is about the locus of the Baudhaayana
which records past movements of people (contesting Prof. Witzel's erroneous translation)
and your comment seems to skirt the locus..

Thanks.

Kalyanaraman

Nov. 15, 2009-11-15Dear Dr. Brighenti,

You wrote: >>I have no website where to post this exchange.
I can prepare a Word document recording the whole exchange and then send it to
you if you want to post it on some website of yours.>>

Sure, I can post it on my website. Include my comments too. Please
do send me the doc. I have forwarded your note to Prof. BB Lal. I will
cite a reference on egroups, to the website containing the exchange, so that
issues can get flagged properly in discussions.

The eastward movement is a big deal, Franceso. It is a movement
into one of the the largest river plains of the world, the Ganga basin.
The evolutionary history of River Ganga and settlements is yet to be told.
Rakesh Tiwari's work on iron smelters in Malhar, Raja-nal-ki-tila and Lohardiva
is a revelation. Lohardiva: lit. loha dvipa of ca. 19th cent. BCE? We may
have to rethink the bronze-iron age sequencing.

I am sure you have seen Prof. Cardona's preface in his book (2003)
on the subject in the broader framework of theIndo-Aryan languageswhich is the title of the book.
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ycdsryq

In my view, this is an important work, which, together with
Marcantonio's edited work (2009, JIESMonograph Series, Monograph 55) and
works on sprachbund by Kuiper, Emeneau and Masica, turns IE received wisdom on
its head.More is yet to come on the invalid nature of
Verner’s and Grimm’s "Laws" :)--